Lose
by embrace-your-inner-dork
Summary: Nastasha-centric, hints of A/N, after the fight, shades of AU. As if she hadn't always taken action with things... this would be the biggest yet, perhaps. If she didn't do something, she knew he would die...


A/N: Okay, this is my first venture into G-Gundam fic. I'm still not entirely familiar with it, but a new friend of mine got me hooked using only fic, art, and the three-and-a-half eps she had. I had to write context sentences for vocab words in English, and I'm supposed to have a short story to put into the school paper as one of my Gifted goals...so I ended up stringing it together and basing it on that. G-Gundam obviously isn't mine, by the way.

LOSE

Tap. Tap. Tap. There I sat in my small, dingy office. It didn't remind me so much of an office as it did a jail cell—like the halls just outside. Ugh. I don't even remember how I got here, only that I was practically brought up to live like this. They taught me to be belligerent, to be cruel, to pull favors from top brass to get where I needed to go. Needless to say, I became quite adroit at doing the government's bidding. Funny, the more I worked for them and learned the inner workings, the more I became averse to the regime and everything it stood for. So why did I keep doing it?

Speaking of which, I had a job to do. Being the warden of a prison would be bad enough. But to be one of several wardens needed for such a massive state-sponsored torture chamber… even the thought of what I had to witness made me grimace in disgust. Within these walls must be a spell of some sort to make everyone retrogress to barbarism, and bewitch the outside world to accept it. My frown deepened as I tried to peer out the window before opening the door. Naturally, it was completely covered in…I don't even know what. I rolled my eyes. One cannot expect for such a place to be meticulously cleaned, but some things could at least be done. Snatching an old rag, I turned on the practically ancient faucet and let it run. I checked. Of course, the trickle of water never got hot…tepid, at best. No matter. The filthy rag went under anyway, then onto the window. One cursory swipe across the pane. Nothing. Another swipe. Nothing. After about five minutes, I could sort of see through it.

Fair enough.

Now that I could ensure something to stare at later when I had nothing to do, I made my way out into the hall to get things over with for the day. Collecting myself so as to seem impervious to what I was surrounded by, I made my way down the corridor, boxed in by rows of dank cells. If they were decent enough to even be called that. My mask slipped ever so slightly as I passed the prisoners. I knew them. I knew all of them. Some of them were quite amicable and kind, if a little disturbed. Granted, there were some that weren't so nice, too. And I could name at least five people that I knew were innocent in this hallway alone. No matter how bad they were, though, no human deserved to be treated like this. But, it needed to be done. I automatically cracked my whip to scare them, like I had been doing for years.

As I neared the end of the hallway, all-too-familiar voices became apparent. I groaned inwardly. _Oh, no, another one. _I could only wonder whom they were planning to condemn to Death Row this time. But then they let the prisoner speak.

I froze.

This one was a prisoner that I had grown quite close to in the year I had known him. I was surprised I had recognized his voice, for how little he talks. Granted, he was one that was not entirely innocent, but he was extremely benevolent for a space pirate captain, and so many wrongful charges had been piled onto him…and the government, in their backstabbing duplicity, had tried to make deals with him. You do such-and-such a thing for us, and we let you and your crew go free. They just didn't tell him the other half—if he failed, he and his crew would die.

He failed.

I listened intently to the conversation—if you could call it that. One of the men was telling him how good a job he did; sarcastically extolling him. Gritting my teeth, I kept listening. Yes, unfortunately, this was the quintessence of this place and everything it stood for. Another man brought up the charges, trying to prove why he should be retried and sentenced to death. Piracy was the obvious one…and as I listened, the only true one. Allegedly, he had not only put countless lives in jeopardy, but maliciously murdered several. And proof that any deaths were intentional was where, exactly? Also, the man said he had torched many cities, igniting horrific holocausts. What was this? He had never even been in any of the cities that burned down. This was ridiculous. As I fumed, the conversation paused, and the men came out.

He stared at me.

A wave of nostalgia hit me. Why couldn't I go back to the old days before this, if there were old days? How many times had I witnessed this? How many times have I seen that face, those eyes, looking back at me; knowing their fate? I forced myself to keep contact with his mournful eyes, those eyes I knew so well. "Help me," he mouthed.

The men pulled him away by his chains, no doubt to discuss elsewhere. Suddenly I had a fresh impetus to defy the government, and especially this awful place. I knew what I had to do.

I had to save him.

I would call a lawyer and have him scrutinize the law to find any loophole there was. In the meantime, I would get more inside information, and make the injustices known to the indifferent outside, start a riot, get things changed. It didn't sound very feasible, but I had to try.

I was sick of it.

I was not going to lose another one.


End file.
